Milestones and finish lines

I hit 10,000 words on "The Box", finally.  It's coming along nicely, and I'm gearing up to bring it to its big, Baysplosion-y finale.  This made me think of the issue of pacing.

Generally stories are supposed to build to the climax, which is the big moment or scene where everything kind of hits the high point.  All of your storylines converge, the emotions of your characters reach their tipping point - essentially this is when you get to the entire point of your story.  When the audience is gripping the arm of their chair, riveted by whatever you're showing them.

When it comes to action-adventure stories, this generally means that things are at their most dire for the hero, and the villain is on the cusp of victory and world domination or some such.  Sometimes, it's okay to buck this idea.  In "Raiders of the Lost Ark", for example, the climax of the film is really when Indy and Marion are tied to a post and the Nazis are opening the Ark - although the film's biggest action sequence is arguably the fight on the plane tarmac followed closely by that amazing truck chase (which to this day is one of my favorite action sequences in any movie - ever.)

Or sometimes, even, your biggest action sequence comes at the beginning of the film.  The Battle of Hoth, anyone?  Generally, though, I think I like films that have a slower first-half and then unleash hell in the back.

Writing a short story is a little different.  With "The Box", which has a lot of action adventure elements in it, more so than any of the other stories from "Show Me the End of the World", I've tried to maintain a sort of even pace in the sense of building it steadily.  There's a creature hunting the characters in the story, and each encounter with it gets bigger and longer and more dangerous than the last.  What I'm hoping is that this lends the story a feeling that it's leading to a huge climax, that the finale of the store will be me letting loose with something truly awesome that made reading the rest of the story worthwhile.

Because if your climax fizzles, well... quite simply, as a writer, you've failed.  Don't let the reader come away disappointed in your payoff.  That's a fear that I've had about my writing rather often.  I'm afraid that I have these great ideas that I can't follow through on for whatever reason.  In screenwriting, I often found my way around this by tossing in some kind of action sequence which ultimately, regardless of how much I love the action/adventure genre, is just lazy writing.  If I'm ever going to overcome my own fears regarding my writing, I've got to force myself to sit down and think about what I'm doing and if I can't come up with a way around a problem, then the solution isn't to sidestep it with action but to go back and address why the problem exists.


But I digress.  "The Box" is almost finished.  At this point, I'm proud of it.  But it's not finished, it still needs work.

I still need to unleash it.

Current Soundtrack:

"Captain America: The First Avenger"
 by Alan Silvestri

Decisions to be made

You'll recall in a previous posting I mentioned that I was rewriting a lost story that didn't make it into "Show Me the End of the World" called "The Box.  Well not only have I been rewriting it, but I've also expanded upon it.  From my admittedly spotty memory, the story wasn't all that long.  But the new version I'm writing is actually quite a bit longer than I remember the original being.

Whether this makes it better or not, I can't be certain.  It might suck. I'm gonna have a couple people read it and give me some feedback on this one, I think.  I'm not sure why I'm so uncertain of it.  My usual rule is that if it's fun to write, then it's fun to read.  This one is fun to write, but for some reason I get the impression it might not be that fun to read.  Maybe it's the length?  Maybe parts of it feel kind of repetitive?  I won't know until I get some people to take a look at it and tell me what they think.

But because it's turned into a bit of a longer project, it's sort of usurped my novel that I was working on, so that will be delayed a bit.  That's totally fine, of course, because I don't want to rush that, nor do I want to demand that my friends and family who just shelled out their hard-earned cash for "Show Me the End of the World" to do so again just a couple months later.  No, the novel will take time and patience and preparation (but, y'know, I've already nearly finished a cover for it...)

I will, however, put "The Box" up on Amazon for the Kindle.  I might even enroll it in the KDP Select program, which requires that it be exclusive to Amazon for 90 days, but gives it some greater promotional push.  "The Box" was supposed to be a short story; honestly I think it'll end up being more of a novella.

Current Soundtrack

"Battle: Los Angeles" - Brian Tyler

Writing = reading?

I may have mentioned previously that writing more has led to a side effect of reading more.  This remains true.  I've downloaded a bunch of books for my Kindle, many of them free, and enjoyed several.  I'll continue to review them, but for today I just wanted to mention that there seems to be a relationship between reading and writing that I hadn't recognized before. Y'know, beyond the obvious.

I used to read all the time, so much that I was going through books like a fiend.  In high school, it was not unusual for me to finish a book a week, and I was a regular patron of the town library.  Somewhere along the way, I lost that.  My reading habits atrophied to mostly just comics and then eventually just the occasional graphic novel.

In the last few months, I reversed that.  Of course, I'm still reading graphic novels - I just finished the collected edition of Greg Pak's "Planet Hulk" which was sadly disappointing - but I've read several novels and short story collections lately that I've quite enjoyed.  And I've found that reading has enhanced my enjoyment of writing and vice versa.

Last night I ended up writing and then reading before bed, and it was a very fulfilling experience.  I didn't get all that much done, but I felt the juices flowing.  I was on, y'know?  The words came easily, and then when I switched to reading - I'm in the middle of a fascinating novel called 'The Windup Girl' - even that just felt right.  The fact that the book is good helps a lot, I'm sure.

Current Soundtrack

"Need for Speed: The Run"
Brian Tyler

In my head, the conversation continues

If you, perhaps, don't know... I love movies.  It's commonplace for me to walk down to the very excellent Somerville Theatre on a Saturday afternoon and catch a matinee.

Today I caught a cool flick called "Chronicle."  And as commonplace as it is for me to see movies, it's just as common for me to think about the things I'll be writing in my head.  Today, for example, as I was walking back from the theatre I was going over what I was going to write for my review of "Chronicle."  It doesn't usually strike me in the midst of these thoughts what I'm doing, but today for some reason it did.

Today I noticed what I was thinking, which is kind of a weird sensation to describe.  But, y'know, I didn't stop.  I just kept going with it.  If I'd had some kind of photographic memory, maybe I'd have simply come home and regurgitated those exact thoughts into my keyboard.  Instead, I came home and just wrote what I could remember and filled out the rest.

One thing I can admit, though, is that this is not the only circumstance where I do this.  I'm constantly going over conversations in my head, continuing on in different directions or trying out different combinations of lines as though the discussions I'm having are me writing dialogue.  If that strikes you as a little neurotic, I won't blame you.  It sort of reminds me of that 'Seinfeld' episode where George is obsessed with crafting the perfect comeback ("Oh yeah, well the Jerk Store called, they're runnin' outta YOU!").

So if you see me walking down the street, lost in my own world and perhaps even muttering to myself... don't be too afraid.

I'm harmless.

...I swear.

Current Soundtrack:
"Need for Speed: The Run" by Brian Tyler

Goals for writing

Y'know, I'm not the most organized person in the world.  That honor goes to a girl I know who color-codes itineraries for weekend trips to New York City.

Lately, though, I've been setting what I think are manageable goals for myself.  Through the magic of Google Calendar, I've created tasks like "Write for 1 hour" several days a week, and it feels rather good to check those off.  A lot of times I'll sit down to write and find myself distracted by Facebook or YouTube or god knows what else.

But setting easy goals seems to help more than I anticipated.  For example, tonight I set the simple goal of "Write for 1 hour," but that was at 8:30 and now it's 10:40 and I just stopped.  Obviously, that's not going to happen every night.  I'm usually at work right now, but if I can rejigger myself to do that in the afternoon before I go into the office, it should work out nicely.

Writing is like going to the gym.  Get yourself into a routine, and it becomes easy.  Break that routine, though, and heaven help you.


Current Soundtrack
"Fast Five" by Brian Tyler

Review: 'Price of a Bounty' by S.L. Wallace

I've noticed that my increased writing has led to an increase of reading, along with the new Kindle I received for Christmas.  I have therefore decided to devote a portion of this blog to reviewing books, since I do it so well for movies and TV.


Price of a Bounty
By S.L. Wallace


Keira Maddock is a Freelancer - she takes jobs as they come, and doesn't think too much about the morality of what she does.  She lives a dark future ruled by the elite, where normal people get by on little more than scraps and technology is reserved for those who can afford it.  But when she takes a job to retrieve stolen money and to kill a young man who supposedly robbed a powerful industrialist, she finds herself drawn into the world of the resistance which holds personal revelations for Keira and her family, and could change the face of society.

"Price of a Bounty" is the debut novel by S.L. Wallace.  It's a light, brisk read with some interesting ideas rattling around in its head, a few well-told action sequences and some intriguing world-building.  The characters are mostly well-drawn, though some come across as a little too basic.  Only Keira and her sister really seem to go through any kind of changes in the book, the others are merely there to facilitate those changes.

Where "Price of a Bounty" really succeeds is the strength of its premise and ideas.  Though the world-building can occasionally be a little vague (we never really learn just how far into the future this is, and few details about the 'war' that left things this way) it's generally well-described.  It reminds me a bit of the dirty future of the second "Highlander" movie, though only in its tone and description - this book is nowhere near as bad as that movie is.  But in this book, aside from the "techno" owned by the elite, technology and appliances for the rest of us are old, broken down and unreliable.  In one scene, Keira is delighted to find a working whirlpool tub, of all things.

The political ideas put forth are reminiscent of my own, which I suppose made me more predisposed to enjoy the book.  Here, the ruling class of uncaring elites is opposed by a resistance made up of those who believe that people have a basic value, which is a theme I can identify with.  Wrapped up in a story that is one part sci-fi, one part espionage and probably two-parts romance novel, there's a lot of stuff floating around in "Price of a Bounty" for probably almost anyone to find something they like.

The romantic subplot works well enough, though there's one twist midway through the novel that didn't work for me, and I even saw it coming too far in advance.  I'm certain the novel would be better off without it, since it doesn't even seem to affect the rest of the plot once it occurs.  Still, I applaud the author for the attempt.

Probably the biggest problem I had with the book was initially one of style.  Each chapter is told in first-person from different characters' perspectives.  So one chapter will be from the mind of Keira, one from Scott, one from April, one from Guy, and so forth.  In the beginning, several scenes are repeated from different points of view, but I didn't feel like this was adding much to the proceedings.  This feeling of redundancy tapered off fairly quickly, though, and the book builds up steam toward its ultimate goals.  I say don't let the first few chapters turn you off.

As I said, "Price of a Bounty" is a quick read, and at only $2.99 for Kindle (or free for AmazonPrime members) it's hard to argue with.  Despite some minor problems, I found it enjoyable enough to recommend if you're looking for some romance with a sci-fi angle.


Current Soundtrack
'The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift' by Brian Tyler

Adoration is a drag/drug

I tend to think I'm a pretty humble person.  I honestly don't like to be in the spotlight, and I rarely take compliments well for my work.  Anything beyond, "Nice job" starts to make me feel uncomfortable.

This, of course, is problematic when you release a book that people are enjoying.  So I get things like coworkers who pass it around the office, and then start asking me questions about it in front of people.  Or, perhaps, I have a friend who tells his bartender in New York City about it, and the bartender proceeds to write my name down on a napkin.  And so on.

On the one hand, this feels good.  People are obviously enjoying my book, which I'm proud of, and are proud of me.  On the other hand, I'm uncomfortable with a level of celebrity.  It felt weird when I was down in Baltimore signing autographs at Shore Leave in 2006 for "Strange New Worlds" and it feels kinda weird now.  But why?

Why?

It seems strange to me that I want people to read and enjoy my work, but that I don't particularly want to get lots of compliments on it.  If people want to discuss the stories with me, I'm more than willing to do so.  I'd love to hear which ones people enjoy, which ones they didn't, and why or why not.

Whatever, I'm a weird person.  It's very late at night, and I haven't written much this week.  I spend the weekend in New York City (which was awesome) and then I've been all off-kilter on my schedule and splitting time between my apartment and my parents' house helping out with some stuff there.  It's making me a little anxious.  I've been so productive lately that taking this time off feels... bad.


Current TV:
'30 Rock' Season 6